My health is taking a nose dive, so I need to take a break from my blog, Etsy shop, etc. Hopefully, I’ll be back towards the end of the year.

Taking care of myself is time consuming, and I have to make it my main job. I’m tempted to do a little work on my (never-ending) story. The problem is, I have to keep to a fairly strict schedule of making fresh meals, supplementation, pH monitoring, etc., and when I do creative work I tend to lose all track of time. I’ll try working with a timer, but if that doesn’t work I should probably just give up all other work except what helps me get well.

​I enjoy stories about aliens. Childhood may be long gone, but I still love fantastic tales that evoke a feeling of wonder and possibility. I love fantasy and science fiction, but I also take a keen interest in researchers that try to convince us that aliens do exist and have even been to earth—not just recently but in very ancient times. True, such researchers are usually outcast by establishment authorities, even accused of perpetrating hoaxes. Too often, somebody digs a little deeper and discovers that the “researcher” turns out to be a travel agency marketer or something, hiding under phony credentials.

It’s not always like that, though. At any rate, I don’t doubt the sincerity of Klaus Dona. He is an art museum curator from Austria. He travels the world in search of unusual artifacts that are ignored by academia because they’re “out of place” and don’t conform to their understanding of history or prehistory. These artifacts often suggest marvelous possibilities, like the presence of aliens in prehistoric times, extinct giants and other species of human, ancient objects that point to technology that “shouldn’t” be possible. Even when he presents really incredible material, I like to keep an open mind.

​Theories abound, explaining “evidence” of ancient aliens in South America. My favorite are the elongated skulls. For some reason there haven’t been any genuine DNA testing on even the most extreme of these anomalous skulls. They’re usually just explained away as the skulls of ordinary human beings that had cultural practices involving cranial deformation.

Just casually looking at them, deliberate deformation seems like a good explanation for some, maybe even most, of such skulls. But some are definitely much too long and elongated to be the consequence of head binding. You can change the shape of the skull but you can’t add volume!

​Another kind of anomaly are the skulls, found by Klaus Dona in Peru and shown below, that don’t have the human bone plates that humans have on the top of their heads, that form around a membrane in infants called the fontanel. It’s the “soft spot” that becomes a tight seam over time, when the separated bone plates close in.

The AnunnakiI enjoy some (not all) of the “spin” coming from Zecharia Sitchin’s translation/ interpretation of the cuneiform writing on some ancient Sumerian clay tablets. According to this trend of thought, Sumerians mistook ancient astronauts (the Anunnaki) for gods. These Anunnaki created human beings to be their slave race, while simultaneously teaching them how to build a complex civilization for themselves—or at least for the ruling class in charge of managing the slaves for them.

Some have gone so far as to claim there are weird reptilian bloodlines, genetically engineered Human/Anunnaki blends, that continue to rule the world to this day. This would certainly be a convenient explanation for why so many of our leaders don’t seem to care whether they utterly destroy all life on earth.

But, I don’t think we need to point to such bloodline critters for the problems we’re having in our society, as human beings are perfectly capable of incredibly destructive acts. They can do anything a reptilian can do. Well… except maybe shape-change into reptiles at will, which one fellow claims British royalty secretly does on a regular basis.

My favorite incredible Anunnaki theory, voiced by author/researcher Michael Tellinger, is that these pre-Sumerian aliens, from extremely ancient times, genetically modified an ape species in South Africa to become their slave gold miners. He believes there was a very ancient and complex civilization involving millions of these GMO’d human slaves, which was centered upon the mining of gold for Anunnaki consumption. He points to a truly astounding network of rough quartz rock structures covering an enormous area in South Africa.

Click on the image below to watch ‪Michael Tellinger‬’s first two episodes (free) of Hidden Origins ‪on Gaia‬. Great photos and he's a wonderful speaker.

​Even though I’m not up to attending meetings right now, I still have fantasies of fully recovering my health and developing some sort of social life, so I signed up with a very interesting local Meetup organized by an Occupy supporter. The latest meeting is for discussing the fascinating video “Century of the Self.” It’s about the history of mind control in the US, invented by Sigmund Freud’s nephew and later morphed into ever-more ingenuous methods by the public relations/advertising industry and our government.

Edward Bernays (the inventor of American brainwashing) in his (filthy rich) old age.

My Response

My family of origin was middle-class, and though bi-racial and bi-cultural, I was raised in a relatively sheltered and privileged manner. This was in an American enclave in the Philippine Islands. I left home early for the US, and my life experiences changed me considerably, especially when (in the 70s) I became a working single mom. I identified with the counter-culture movement of the 60s, and as I grew older, with progressive and radical politics.

So, from my point of view, this video definitely has a white middle-class vantage point. I’m not condemning it, because the documentary helped so much to fill in the gaps of my understanding of some of the things going on at the time. Also, I sometimes share this vantage point. Still, I don't like how this video leaves out where everybody else was coming from!

Me PersonallyWhat was going on with me at the time was a process of increasing radicalization. My rejection of mainstream culture didn't evolve into a preoccupation with personal development and the accumulation of consumer goods. It was more like a jumping-off stage for re-linking with the history of the US labor movement, civil rights and other movements for expanding the democratic rights of the people. Above all, it was the civil disobedience and protest movements that defined that era for me.

I rejected Freud early on (thanks to Betty Friedan), and found EST and such totally repulsive. When Reagan was elected I took it to mean that fascism was subtly on the rise again. Today I’d call it corporate rule. We have yet to see how closely Trump can bring us to actual fascism. He's doing a pretty good job so far.

Many people in “my America” back then despised “yuppy-ism” (the transformation of counter-culture hippies into prosperous consumers) and rejected the pursuit of individualist concerns over social ones. The failure of hippie culture caused us to become even more politically extreme. I myself became a marxist in the 70s—until total disillusionment set in a decade later.

But then, disconnected from activism and the progressives I once knew, I became alienated and also more prosperous than I'd ever been (not counting childhood). In short, I was a "late bloomer," not sucked into the consumerist culture until the late 80s. And, it didn't even last very long. The “dot com bubble" crashed, and I lost a job I’d held for 15 years. There's nothing like being laid off in your 50s, especially if you’re a woman, to snap your senses back to reality.

Middle Class - Working ClassOkay, I got a little wordy there, describing where I’m coming from. What I started out meaning to say is this. Middle-class people have never been the majority of whites, although this class strata does seem to exert a lot of influence over popular culture. Especially as their issues are often backed by corporate culture and their media.

Many working-class whites could once rival the incomes of many college-educated middle-class whites. It was probably handy for state propaganda reasons to lump such working-class with the middle-class. But, while income is significant, it's not everything. Obviously the average auto worker and such have very different work and life experiences than people that have gone to college and work at jobs involving at least some measure of decision-making and thinking.

My personal observation is that working-class people (and not just whites) are often resistant to much of middle-class culture, even repelled by it. I think there have always been far more working-class than middle-class whites, and unfortunately it’s from the white working class that Trump garners so much of his support.

Political and cultural "intelligentsia” of all countries tend to come from educated middle- and upper-class people, and often they end up being the ideological and organizational leaders of political movements. But their culture? orientation? is often at odds with the masses. They often just don’t know how to relate to working-class whites or how to move them; instead only criticizing, vilifying and alienating them.

I once felt intense prejudices against “rednecks.” Today I see what a mistake this was. I think progressives should have been trying to figure out how to relate to them and influence them. On the other hand, I might be willing to find out if we have common ground, but my experience, again and again, is that they are not. On the contrary, they seem more of a threat to me and “my kind” than ever. So I have no idea how to interact with such people any better now than before.

It seems to me that Bernie could exert great appeal to that sector, though mass exposure to leadership like his may have come too late. I hope not!​

​Last summer, my kitchen was totally overrun by ants. They hardly bothered with the other rooms, but in the kitchen they got into everything!

The nightmare started after I interrupted a little party of black ants swarming over something invisibly delicious that we must have spilled onto the floor. I mopped up all the ants by using paper towels dampened with hot water. That little swarm should have been a major warning signal right then and there, but I just didn’t think any more of it.

During the next few days, I started seeing more of these little raids. We started storing every package we opened up in the refrigerator: bread, pasta, you name it. I put the honey jar into a shallow bowl filled with water to create a moat.​

I don’t like having poisons around, so I went on the internet to find out more about ants and alternative ways to get rid of them. I had three sizes of ants, apparently sharing trails. I read that some ant species have more than two sizes (they’re always going to have a queen size and a smaller worker size) but each type prefers either oily/fatty or sweet things.

​“My” ants liked both, so I guessed that I was being raided by at least two different “tribes.” Most were black, but some of them were partly red.

Huge queen, small workers. Photo by Barbusse

​I found out ants hate vinegar. It’s also said to erase the chemical trails that they leave, which supposedly renders them confused and helpless. I used full-strength white vinegar in a spray bottle for use in cleaning all surfaces, including the sink, stove, fridge and floor. I'd spray again to make sure the vinegar was really smelly for them. (Note: vinegar is bad for granite countertops so check what your kitchen surfaces can handle before using vinegar on them.)

But every day the ants still kept coming. They didn't look confused to me, and clearly, they couldn't care less if their chemical trails were erased. But vinegar did seem to work fairly well as a repellent, as it cut down on their numbers.

Unfortunately the vinegar dissipates so I had to clean/spray every day, usually too late to prevent the first raid because they got going well before I got up in the morning. I’d neglect to clean off a patch on the stove. D would forget to put away an opened carton of something. So there was always some minor siege going on when I went downstairs.

I should mention: the teeny ones and the larger ones (about 1/4 inch) actually gave up right away once I started using vinegar. The most persistent guys were the middle-sized (1/8 inch) black ants. They were the ones that insisted on paying me a visit every day.

Total InvasionOne night I cooked a huge pot of stew and afterwards I felt too burned out to clean up very well. I just piled stuff in the dishwasher and skipped the vinegar routine. Well that really got everybody all excited. I went downstairs the next morning to find huge lines of the 1/8-inch ants swarming in trails that branched to different parts of the kitchen. Their main highway clearly started at the back door, and radiated from there. Ants were all over the place: in the sink, on the counters, the fridge and the stove.

The first thing I did was jump around freaking out. Then I mopped up all the ants using my usual damp-paper-towel method. This time was it was especially gross due to the sheer numbers. (What would a Buddhist do at a time like this?) And, they didn’t just crawl around on the refrigerator, they got inside! They even got into the freezer!

They didn’t get into much actual food because the cold apparently immobilizes them. None of the frozen food was touched at all, because once they got inside the freezer, the ants froze right beside the opening. Still, it was no fun cleaning out ant corpses from all around the rims of the fridge and freezer door.

VictoryAs soon as the clean-up was over, I clambered back up the stairs to get on the internet for more help. I stumbled on what turned out to be the final coup de grâce. This was, of all things, baby powder! I found some at a nearby Walmart, and sprinkled the powder across all the door and window sills and on all their trails. Apparently ants don’t like to touch the stuff and it also is said to wipe out the chemical trails. Best of all, baby powder doesn’t evaporate and fade away like the vinegar. It seems to hang on to its repellent powers indefinitely. A long time anyway.

​It’s important to use the old-fashioned kind of baby powder that’s made of talc rather than cornstarch. You might not like this remedy if you can’t stand to look at a mess. In that case, I’ve read that neat lines of chalk drawn across entry ways will deter them too. It's said that the ants won’t cross over the line. But I was already in the midst of a massive invasion and chalk lines just didn’t seem like enough to defeat such determined raiders.

I’m pretty mess-tolerant, so I liked the baby powder idea and shook out great big lines of the stuff everywhere. The very next day there were hardly any more ants anywhere. Still saw a random few individuals here and there, but the “war” was over!

I’m not really sure how long to leave the talc in place. I left it over the main trails all summer long. After I swept or vacuumed, I “replenished” the talc. The ants never used any of the secondary trails that had criss-crossed the floor, which might have meant that there was no need to keep any talc in place, except maybe across the door way. But I was somewhat traumatized and wasn’t willing to give up my “fortifications”! ​

This little guy is kind of cute

​Ants Aren't All Bad​I really like the talc remedy because it’s not toxic to humans (try not to breathe it in though), it’s super cheap and it really worked well to get rid of those ants for me. Also it doesn’t wipe out the entire ant population in my back yard ecosystem; it mainly keeps them out of the house. I’m not just being sentimental here, kids! Many ant species eat dead insects and other small animals, as well the eggs of all kinds of pesky household insects, like cockroaches, fleas, flies and bedbugs.

Also they’re forever tunneling, aerating and turning over the dirt outdoors, like earthworms. If you’re a gardener, you know how helpful this is in improving soil quality. ​Ants are on my mind right now, because I’ve been noticing more and more of them crawling around lately. It may be too early but I don’t care! They’re not catching me unawares this time! I sprinkled talc across the front and back doorways right away. I’ve got my vinegar spray bottle all set to go, just in case the ants storm the front lines.

Ant CityThis last thing has nothing to with defending against ants, but I had to add the youtube link below, about some scientists that excavated a huge ant colony below ground. Startling and interesting.​

My son D. treated me to breakfast for Mother’s Day at the Desert Grows Kitchen, a small, colorful restaurant featuring delicious food using locally grown, fresh and healthy ingredients.

Afterwards we went for a long walk at Los Poblanos, a kind of eco-tourist attraction and historic preserve, including a bed-and-breakfast inn, cultural center and a unique, working organic farm located within the city limits of Albuquerque’s northwest sector.

Field of lavender bushes. The farm specializes in making great quality lavender products (soap, lotions, etc)

This historic property, located in an exclusive neighborhood, was “granted” to a Spanish family in the 18th century and later owned by various wealthy European-American VIPs. Over time, it has been subdivided and reduced in size, though the present Los Poblanos area still comprises 25 acres. The original Los Poblanos land is said to have been inhabited by the Anasazi people.​

Historic building near entrance to gardens. I love the red chili ristras hanging on the porch!

I’ve been interested in seeing the place ever since I first came to Albuquerque. I learned about Los Poblanos via the internet and was amazed that an actual farm has somehow survived within a metropolitan area. I was impressed that they seem to be quite active in promoting sustainable organic farming, too.

But actually being there unexpectedly turned out to be a little creepy for me. Now and then, amidst feelings of awe and admiration, I couldn't help sensing the darkness underlying all that pretty historic atmosphere. As we walked along a beautiful path overhung by immense cottonwood trees, I wondered whether the bones of the vanquished still lay under the ground beneath our feet.​

Garden path. Such lush greenery is unusual in desert country, but the farm has the good fortune to be located right next to the Rio Grande.

I tried to push away such depressing thoughts. There's really no point in letting ourselves dwell on the cruelties and injustices committed by humankind, especially in the past. What we learn from the dire times in history is best utilized in making better, more thoughtful choices in the present, and for the sake of the future.

I wanted to enjoy the beautiful morning and the company of my son, who I'm so fortunate to know. The weather was perfect—Albuquerque's Big Sky was quintessentially dramatic. I remembered the words of Thich Nhat Hahn, who advised us to remember to be grateful that we have eyes, that allow us to see the beautiful blue sky.

And it was Mother's Day—a day for showing gratitude and appreciation. I wanted to focus on what Los Poblanos is, here and now: an interesting, beautiful, quite wonderful example of what the Pillars of the Community might accomplish. The Los Poblanos enterprise represents the opposite of the Monsantos of the world after all.

That’s pretty amazing, considering how the unbridled, profit-crazed corporate interests of our time seem to be intent on pushing life on earth towards extinction.​

D. checking out the Farm Shop, an antique greenhouse renovated into a charming little store selling all sorts of crafts and garden- and farm-related goodies.

​Side path from the garden to Los Poblanos Inn dining room. Not used to seeing so much grass in Albuquerque!

If Trump actually gets voted President, maybe it will be safer for me to spend the end of my life in a place that still “gets” democracy. I’ve been researching and fantasizing about it quite a lot lately. It has to be someplace where my puny income will stretch yet is reasonably close to my sons, which means Central America or the more northerly countries of South America. I know they won't come with me. They're not as paranoid as I am about what racists might be willing to do.

I first did some research into Panama and Belize but I'm not too crazy about them. I’m more enthusiastic about Cuenca, Ecuador. Panama and Belize seem really, really hot, and also more crime-ridden and anti-gringo. (Yes, I’ve learned that I better get used to being lumped together with gringos.) I have the impression that foreigners in those countries need to be quite rich to insulate themselves from the resentment they've generated. Could be wrong. I'll be researching quite a lot more before really deciding about all this.

I do realize there’s a lot working against making such huge move. I’ll somehow have to save a ton of money to pay for relocation fees and expenses, and probably some legal guidance as well. Last but not least I’ll need to learn Spanish semi-fluently. Oh yes, and I’ll have to cure cancer. Just kidding! Actually one of the incentives for me to leave the country is that I could get alternative treatment for cancer legally if I needed to, in certain countries south of the border. I seem to be over the nightmarish infection I’d been fighting all year, but at this writing, I still have no idea whether I’m still cancer free. I feel OK overall but it’s always a concern. I expect it always will be, once you've had cancer.

I intended to learn how to speak Spanish ever since I moved to Albuquerque. But since it’s optional here, it’s easy to put off. Moving to a country where most people do not speak English is a very different situation. My relocation fantasy finally galvanized me into buying a set of (used) Basic Spanish CDs by Pimsler. It’s 32 lessons, 30 minutes each, recommended once a day only. I had my first lesson today. “Perdon, señora. Soy norteamericano. No hablo Español. Habla Engles?” My lesson didn’t say to use the word “Soy.” I’ve just heard it before. At the moment, I’m confused about the meaning and proper usage of “ustedes” versus “es usted.”

About Cuenca

Rafael Correa. Photo by Cancillería Ecuador

Ecuador seems more politically stable, and less poor and demoralized than many of its neighboring countries. ​I admire what I’ve read about Ecuador’s president. He somehow managed to reduce his country’s debt significantly (without getting assassinated), then put the money thus saved into building his country’s infrastructure and into relieving poverty. He comes from the lower middle class, and was educated as an economist. Naturally I’m much more attracted to governments like that compared to some of the high-roller countries one reads about, with serious corruption and violence problems.

I am not attracted to living near the beach. It's not just because it's serious earthquake country. Gringo enclaves everywhere seem to be most expensive near the coast, and in the first place I dread unrelenting hot and humid weather. When I learned that there was a large “expat” community in Cuenca, and that it was located high up in the cool mountains, I began trying to learn much more about living there (and Ecuador generally). Cuenca is said to be Ecuador’s cultural capital, which is also appealing.

Then I found the youtube world of “Frank and Angie,” that presents a non-commercial and less romanticized insight into what retirement is like for ordinary Americans in Cuenca.

Screen shot of Frank & Angie youtube home page. (Click to go there.)

​Frank and Angie are a retired gringo couple who moved to Cuenca some years ago with their three adult sons. They maintain a very informative website and have made hundreds of little videos about frugal living in Cuenca. I respect how they choose not to insulate themselves in a segregated “gringo-land” community when they moved to Ecuador. They strive to blend in, and to try to understand the customs and ways of their new home.

They also try to teach their fellow expatriates how to avoid behaving like Ugly Americans: to respect Ecuadorians and their culture, learn the language, stop flaunting your wealth or trying to lord it over the locals, etc. I appreciate their no-nonsense advice and observations, both positive and negative. I love the non-slick, non-glamorizing “slice-of-life” format of their videos.

I’m pretty excited about Cuenca right now, but I’ve still got a lot of researching to do about Ecuador and other countries that might be good places to retire outside of the US. And I’ve got a lot to consider regarding how to live fairly safe and secure, despite being an old lady alone in a foreign country.

On the other hand, if Bernie wins, I’m sticking it out in the USA as I want to support his efforts. I just hope that he doesn’t turn out to be another huge disappointment like Obama.

​I’d love to learn how to make my own pewter charms using molds. Unfortunately, due to some health-related expenses, I can’t sink any more money into classes, tools etc. But I can still experiment with making charms using metal embossing, since I’m fairly well set up for it already.

I have a set of zodiac symbols that I drew during my CafePress days. I revised them to fit some 1-inch pendant trays. I got as far as printing them out (to trace the outline onto a pewter sheet), but stopped there. I realized it would be better to start with just one pendant design rather than a set of 12 all at once. I find that new projects sometimes require one, two, even three initial trials. So I’ll have to get back to the zodiac project later. For now, I decided I should make lingling-o pendants.

What Are They?Lingling-o are ancient symbols, usually formed into brass pendants, though other metals are used as well. I first learned about them in the late 1950s, when I was a young girl living in the Philippines. Back then, lingling-o were just vaguely referred to as fertility symbols made by certain tribes living in the Philippine highlands.

Photo by Chaoborus

The Americans I knew from the airbase (where I grew up as a child) liked to make treks up to the highlands to buy all kinds of tribal handicrafts as souvenirs of their stay in the Philippines, including lingling-o. Back then, the typical middle-class Filipino enjoyed shell and wood crafts, but did not bring such things as lingling-o into their homes. Except for some scholarly types, they were generally viewed as spurious pagan objects, embarrassing or even evil relics of a pre-Christian, "uncivilized" past.

This attitude would soon change; after a decade or so, there would be a resurgence of nationalist consciousness, and an avid interest in all things Filipino. Today, the history (and pre-history) and the many forms of lingling-o (and their symbolic meanings) have come to light. They’re very popular with younger generations of American Filipinos, thirsty to learn more about their heritage, and fascinated with trying to piece together what it might have been like in pre-colonial times.

Lingling-o are symbols of womanhood in the sense of the great power associated with women’s ability to give birth, which was considered to be awesome and magical in many ancient societies. As a young girl (living in more misogynistic and cultural chauvinist times), I simply loved that it was a positive female symbol invented by Filipinos.

But actually, the symbolism embedded within lingling-o is complex and many-layered, often depending on context and the wearer’s intention, not unlike ankh and cowrie symbolism. It also turns out not to be exclusively Filipino, having been used in ancient times by many Southeast Asia cultures. I’ve read they were originally carved from stone.

Men wearing lingling-o did not (and still don't) view them as having a direct association with women, whether generally or in the sense of a love interest. It was about drawing from an ancient mystical and spiritual concept of potent, life-giving powers that brought luck, strength and protection to any endeavor, especially warfare and hunting. Sometimes the basic shape is combined with animal heads, fish tails and the like.

Embossed Pewter

Version 1

I wasn’t happy with my first try on embossed pewter, so I decided to make the symbol a little larger. Not sure I like that one any better though. I think I’ll just let this design sit for a while. Maybe it will grow on me. Or maybe I’ll try making a lingling-o out of polymer clay.

I hardly got any sleep last night. I took melatonin, but memories of a really bad incident that happened yesterday kept troubling me, and keeping me awake.

So this is what happened. I was sitting in the car, which was parked in the Trader Joe’s parking lot, while my son was inside shopping for a few things. I didn’t have anything to read while I was waiting, so I decided to call my other son, G.

We were having a pleasant chat, when I heard/felt a loud bang. A middle-aged peroxide-blonde woman had just smashed her car door into mine. This was not a careless little tap. It was a forceful hit that jolted me. And she didn’t even try to apologize or anything. She just got into her car without looking at me.

Oh my God. I totally snapped. I smashed my car door into hers in a sudden impulse to fight back. It wasn't because she dented my car. It was such a decrepit old thing anyway that one more dent didn't really matter. It was her attitude that enraged me!

I was extremely angry, but so was she. In fact she smashed her door into mine again. So I did it again. Then she did it again. Now, I was so infuriated that I hastily struggled to take off my seat belt and get out of the car, with every intention of doing serious bodily harm. She backed her car out fast, at an angle, nearly hitting me, while shouting insults. I responded in kind, yelling at the top of my lungs, until she drove off. I think my last words were, “I hope you crash and kill yourself, you stupid bitch!”

Yes. It was ugly.

I had dropped my cell phone on the seat of the car, so the whole time this madness was going on, my son had been listening. As if I didn't feel stupid enough. When I picked up the phone, I was shaking, my heart was pounding and I could hardly speak. While I was trying, between ragged gulps of air, to explain what had just happened, G interrupted and said, “Mom? Mom! Whose car are you in?”

Oh my God. I then realized I was in D’s nice truck, not my old, beat-up jalopy! In the throes of that rage, I had forgotten where I was!

I’ve never been a physical fighter, never got into “cat fights" as a girl, never very interested in martial arts. Not just that, but my health has had some challenges in the last few years, and I’ve become quite weak. When I was struggling to get my stiff and ancient body out of the car, adrenaline may have made me forget all my aches and pains, but it was still a ridiculously slow and lumbering process.

I may have been visualizing that I would violently bash that woman’s head in with my cane, but in reality, I’m not sure what kind of damage I could actually have managed, with my weak arm waving a spindly cane about and trying to get it through her car window. Sheesh. Maybe I might have poked her in the eye one time.

She was a sturdy-looking, middle-aged woman with frizzy blonde hair. I’m a slow-moving, overweight, white-haired old Filipino lady. One shove and she probably could have made me fall and break my stupid hip or something.

​And yet, I had fallen into the grip of that fugue-like state of mind, where your frontal cortex totally disconnects from your brain stem (otherwise known as Lizard Brain).

The instant I felt attacked, I forgot where I was—and even what I was! All that adrenalin surging through my body wiped out every sense of my age and true physical state.

The whole thing was so stupid. Ridiculous. Made no sense at all. But my point is this. Despite my advanced age and the idiotic reality of the situation, I felt extremely violent in the grip of that sudden, swiftly mounting fury.

A Political EpiphanyIt was a good thing that I don’t carry a handgun. In those few crazed moments, I could have made a really terrible, life-changing mistake. I could be sitting in a jail cell right now, instead of having a lovely cup of French Roast. I could be spending my old age in a prison!

Good thing that horrible woman didn’t carry a gun either, or she could be the one sitting in a jail cell, and I could be lying dead in the morgue.

I’m no conservative and yet I’ve always been against gun control. I was always abstractly focussed on our right, as citizens, to bear arms and to be able to defend ourselves. Just in case terrorists or else the government starts attacking us. Or else, just in case there's a catastrophic social collapse, freeing all the sociopathic bullies to start rampaging about like the villains in a Mad Max movie.

But now I totally get why ordinary people—typically untrained—should not carry handguns. I mean, judging by the news these days, even police and soldiers regularly lose it, despite professional training. Now I can truly understand the dire peril involved in having a small, fatally dangerous weapon that can be stashed all-too-conveniently in pockets and purses and glove compartments.

​Utter disaster can happen in an instant. There you are, one nice, peaceable old thing, basking in the sun coming through the car window, and having a genial phone conversation. Then, one stupid door-smashing incident, and suddenly you turn into a raging green Hulk, even if only in your own deluded senior lizard brain.

I still think citizens should have the right to bear arms—at least until the day that human beings are capable of living in a society so reasonable, equitable and civilized that we have no need for armed police either.

But now, my opinions on this issue have shifted. At least until a doomsday event actually occurs, I think maybe citizens should just keep large, inconvenient weaponry that we have to store someplace special in the house, under lock and key.

AddendumBy the time my son D came back from shopping, I was feeling a lot of remorse and chagrin. Great example of a mom, especially at my age. I offered to pay for the damage, of course. D took a look at the door and said he could see some dents, but didn’t think it was worth repairing. He just wished I had thought to simply ask her for her insurance information. Why, why, why didn’t I think of that?

On the other hand, would somebody like that have given her data to me? I guess I could have taken a photo of her license plate as she drove off and left me in the dust.

At least in part, I think I totally lost it like that because I’ve been dealing with a very painful bacterial infection since before Thanksgiving. I’ve tried prescription antibiotics and half a dozen natural remedies but so far nothing has permanently cured it.

I’m not trying to excuse my behavior, but I think months of constant pain and irritation was really getting on my nerves, and that was why I snapped so easily. Because usually I have a very long fuse. I lead a quiet, reclusive life. I never have drama!

OK maybe I am trying to excuse my behavior, a little. It was very troubling.

I don’t remember now what it was I was originally researching when I stumbled on this photo of an Egyptian Fly Necklace. It was surprising to me that anyone would want to actually wear flies on their person, and I ended up forgetting all about what I was searching for and went off on a tangent to look up fly symbolism.​Apparently flies were popular amulets for centuries in ancient Egypt and Nubia. Symbols of flies were believed to drive off evil, including enemies. It was considered a great honor for a high-ranking military man to receive a necklace of large gold fly amulets from the king. Smaller flies were material for more ordinary protection jewelry.

It’s said that the fly symbol represented determined persistence, but I’m not sure whether it symbolized that the victor was being honored for his persistence or whether he was being honored for achieving military success despite the enemy’s annoying, difficult-to-overcome, fly-like persistence.

Either way, it was apparently considered significant, important, and even admirable to be compared to a fly back then.

The idea that an irritating little fly could merit such attention and prestige astonished me. It’s difficult for us, as modern folk, to put ourselves into the mindset of the ancients. To visualize or envision the day-to-day workings of cultures and societies so distant in time. Back then people obviously saw things very differently than we do.

And it’s not just flies. How did a dung beetle acquire the positive symbolism of the revered and honored scarab? What was the socio-cultural process that led to the reverence of critters like beetles and flies?

When you stop to think about it, such significant fly symbolism implies that people back then must have had a very different attitude towards small creatures that we would consider repugnant, or at least too unimportant to merit attention. (And in the case of dung beetles, they must have had quite a different attitude towards poop, too.)

I read that even in modern times, flies are still considered to be symbols or totems representing persistence, but I don’t know anyone who would voluntarily want a fly to be their personal totem, do you? Yeah, I don't think I'm going to be making jewelry involving fly symbolism any time soon.

But all this did make me think twice about my aversion to flies. All nature’s creatures deserve recognition for the positive aspects of their existence. We don't need to welcome flies into our homes, but we do need to remember that as one of nature's scavengers, they play an important role in the environment. They do spread disease but they also control it by eating and thereby getting rid of rotting organic matter. Flies are also food for larger insects, birds and reptiles. They're popular as bait for fishers too.

People in our time tend to have an unbalanced view and demonize insects and other critters that repulse or annoy them. This has led to huge mistakes, as the crazy history of the development of corporate pesticides show. But that’s a whole other story…

​This necklace was fun to make. I have accumulated quite a lot of beads that I haven’t known what to do with — from free samples, leftovers from past projects, online orders that turned out not to look the way I expected, etc.

A few days ago, I had a nostalgic moment. When I lived in San Francisco (and was much, much younger), this was the time of year when I used to start anticipating Carnaval. Thinking about the old days, and suddenly I knew what to do with those mis-matched beads! Take the most colorful and make something fun and festive, in memory of those music-filled times.

A Little HistoryIn San Francisco, Carnaval takes place in May. I first started watching the parade when I lived in the Mission District, not far from where it would begin. Back then (so many years ago), Carnaval was a new phenomenon in SF. It was still possible to leave my apartment on Bartlett & 26th a little early, walk down a couple blocks to Mission Street, and find an empty bench to sit on while we waited for the parade.

It was marvelous. The colorful floats — the bands playing samba and salsa (the drummers were especially stirring) — the beautiful, sparkling dancers. It was all so heady, so exciting. They didn’t put barriers up back then, and before long, watchers would join the parade, often dancing beside and behind their favorite groups.

​ You have to imagine the times. San Francisco has long been famous for its tolerance of different cultures, but this is a relative thing. It had previously been unheard-of for the Latin American community (based in the Mission District back then) to celebrate their culture so openly and spectacularly. It was a fun parade to be sure, but in the beginning it was also a cultural liberation event, and all the celebrants (from every race and nationality) knew this and rejoiced.

Before long, however, Carnaval lost its participatory, power-to-the-people atmosphere and became more regulated and business-like, with the performers segregated from the audience, and more of a police presence. (Though nothing like Rio de Janeiro, where it’s a massive, serious institution.) I suppose it was forced to become more coordinated with the SF city government after it grew so much in popularity. I mean, it’s one thing to have riotous good fun, but quite another if an actual riot develops. The parade grew as more and more cultures from the Caribbean, Central and South America were represented. The crowds got bigger and bigger and bigger, until there was little hope of getting a front row seat, much less join in.

SF Carnaval, May 2014. Photo by Claire Weissbluth.

​Eventually I moved away from the Mission District, but I still tried to make it to the festival at parade’s end. I loved it most during the first few years, but it was still fun. <big sigh> Colorful booths offering interesting arts and crafts — still other booths selling a diverse range of savory dishes (this was early days, before food trucks) — various bands set up at different stages so we (the general public) could dance to our music of choice. By then reggae and soca music were much in demand, and festivities would continue late into the night at the various clubs around town.

I’ve read that in recent times, Carnaval has grown even bigger, and that it has become more like a general spring festival, with parade groups representing countries in Asia, Africa and the Middle East as well. It’s now said to be the most diverse Carnaval in the world. I think that’s fabulous, but I hope Latin America is still predominantly featured, as nothing says “fun” and “party” like samba, salsa and soca music!